The importance of having, and sticking to, a routine

Last night I slipped. Today I am dealing with the usual mental repercussions – depression, anxiety, tiredness and horniness to name a few.

As always, each time I act out I ask myself why and how it happened and what I need to do differently to prevent a similar situation happening again.

This time it was easy to understand – I didn’t stick to my routine. I have a number of things I must do each day, and one of them is going to bed at 10:30pm without fail. Most of the time I act out is when I stay up late procrastinating – watching YouTube videos etc – until my mind leads me to porn, almost as something to do to postpone the having to go going to bed. (Why I feel the need to avoid going to bed is probably the more interesting question and I have a few ideas).

It is so interesting how powerful routines and rules can be in recovery. My rule of a 10:30pm is responsible for countless sober porn-free nights, and after only a few days of slipping into a slightly later and later bedtime, I acted out. The challenge is that without any form of accountability on whether I go to bed on time, it is very easy for me to start slipping in this way.

The other aspect to my acting out was that I remembered a major loophole in the blocks of my computer, which today I have closed. There will always be loopholes but for me they should only be ones that are hard to put to use; the one yesterday was just a few clicks, so I closed that off.

Anyway, just writing this post as a form of checking in and acknowledgement of the slip. I feel a bit down about it but that’s ok – I’m going to accept how I feel, learn from it, and carry on. This was my best sober streak since January so I’m really pleased about that, and I’m confident I can do the same, or better, again.